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CD Projekt Red is under investigation

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Re: CD Projekt Red is under investigation

#41

Post by shmerl »

warpech wrote: post #2

It seems that everybody seems to hate this game, or rather unfinishedness of it. Meanwhile, I am playing it since 2 weeks on PS4 (not Pro) and totally enjoying every minute it.

I started playing it on Linux (Wine+vkd3d-proton), but I paused the playthrough - I'm waiting for some patches for spatial audio to land and also for a newer AMD GPU, they are pretty hard to get now. By that time the game will also accumulate some good amount of patches.

As a Linux gamer, I really don't get this whole drama and I appreciate that CDPR even provided the game to Wine and Mesa developers in advance so they even added a whole new Vulkan extension to improve support for it.

Re: CD Projekt Red is under investigation

#42

Post by ponow »

slg wrote: post #7

>If UOKiK finds that CD Projekt Red acting misleadingly ahead of Cyberpunk 2077’s launch, and has not done enough to address the game’s issues, the developer could face a 10 per cent fine of its annual income. I have no idea the merits of this investigation, but it is refreshing to see a potential punishment like this. Fines for bad behavior often end up as simple fees for rich people and businesses. If you want thes…

Why government intervention is necessary is unclear. At best one has an implicit contract during a pre-order, which was violated due to its bugs. That anyone could seriously believe that any complex software will be "bug free" strikes me as risible. It seems to me that people are making a bet on a pre-order. No regulation is necessary in any event: this can be handled using class action law, and true egregious misrepresentations are kept in check in this way. These kinds of regulations are a jobs program for the officious personality and a way for politicians to seem relevant, but is mostly a form of or invitation to corruption, as the powerful influence the crafting of law to keep the small fry at bay.

Buyer beware, IMO. Wait 'til it's out, reviewed, etc., and then you'll know.

Re: CD Projekt Red is under investigation

#43

Post by Sodman »

jgust wrote: post #20
chundicus wrote: post #3

I hope this will encourage big studios to stop releasing broken games, but I doubt it will. The incentives are just so broken due to ease of patching, a need/desire for cash after a drawn out dev process, and a general disrespect for their customers. I think releasing a "broken" game in the form of "early access" from smaller studios can be good in terms of iterative and community development, but also that can be ab…

It's a tragedy of the commons situation with gamer enthusiasts acting against their own best interest. If people can't delay gratification for something as inconsequential as "non-broken video games", I don't see how any personal responsibility campaign has any chance of working for things impacting society at large such as climate change, overfishing, public health, etc.

I don't think it's fair to blame this on gamers. With all of the hyperbole over various games being "broken", most people that are hyped about a specific game are just going to buy it and see for themselves. Unless it's literally unplayable (as may actually have been the case here), most people won't refund it.

This has been going on for years and years, it's just getting worse over time. It's always some variant of this conversation at $GAMEDEV_STUDIO:

Focus group feedback: Our test groups are noticing 10% of players are running into this bug/issue. It's frustrating them, but there are workarounds.

Management: All of our marketing materials target release date XX/XX/XXXX. If we try to fix this bug we'll have to push the release... How many people will _not_ buy the game because of this bug?

Focus group feedback: Nobody that would have otherwise bought this game would decide not to buy it over this issue.

Management: So we ship as planned, and fix the bugs in a patch.

Over time studios realized that you can get away with much bigger bugs affecting much larger portions of players. Ship sooner, start recognizing revenue, and push post-launch patches to fix the "really bad bugs". It's shocking how bad the quality has to get before it starts making headlines.

Re: CD Projekt Red is under investigation

#44

Post by eznzt »

gabereiser wrote: post #34
eznzt wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The issue is with so many bugs (many of which preventing a player from finishing a story quest) You should see games from The Elder Scrolls franchise. Even in the latest version of Skyrim there still are game-breaking bugs they have not fixed.

I’m familiar. I think ES franchise is prone to this, so was GTA and RDR2. The issue is gamers expect an entire world of simulation and effect. Ambitious large open world games suffer from this as dev teams don’t have enough QA to test everything and dev’s have to test it themselves. This ends up with a “works good under these circumstances” which circumstances are different when players play it at launch. It’s a hard…

I understand you. I have not played Cyberpunk but games from the TES family are extremely complex. It would be impossible for them not to have scripting bugs.

Re: CD Projekt Red is under investigation

#45

Post by hcnews »

Reedx wrote: post #6
warpech wrote: post #2

It seems that everybody seems to hate this game, or rather unfinishedness of it. Meanwhile, I am playing it since 2 weeks on PS4 (not Pro) and totally enjoying every minute it.

It's mostly that the loudest, angriest voices tend to drown out everyone else.

Active steam users for this game dropped much faster than that of Witcher 3 (which was similarly/less flawed at launch) based on public steam data. So, there's lot of evidence behind the message.

Anecdotally, the players I knew have stopped playing it altogether due to a variety of issues.

Re: CD Projekt Red is under investigation

#46

Post by mjevans »

bendoerr wrote: post #30
gabereiser wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At its core it’s a decent game. The issue is with so many bugs (many of which preventing a player from finishing a story quest) it’s hard to focus on the game when your copy keeps crashing, glitching, frustrating you.

Do you have an example of a bug that prevents quest completion? I've been lucky enough to not run into a single one during my 100+ hours so far and I've been trying to do every quest. I worry that these things keep getting said without people actually experiencing them. I have several friends playing on PS4 without the reported crashes. Not saying you haven't, I just don't have any direct knowledge of the issues that…

I viewed such a bug on a Twitch stream. Avoiding spoiler details... The streamer was completing the Delemain (sp) questline and had to roll back to a save just before the decision at the end due to a softlock that happened in the scripted sequence after.

Re: CD Projekt Red is under investigation

#47

Post by throw_m239339 »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #40
throw_m239339 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I considered going into the gaming industry years ago, but the audience is such a turnoff. I think that the issue isn't so much 'the audience' but the terrible work conditions associated with the gaming industry. > It really holds the medium back as an art form How? games are probably the most diverse art form in existence today, there is literally no rules to what a game can be.

The audience of gamers strikes me as perhaps the most immature, needlessly difficult group of art consumers in the world today. Even movies don’t get the same kind of petulant obsession and hostility that games do. I’m not sure if it’s just a consequence of gamers being younger or what, but it’s a major turnoff to me. The fact that CDPR devs got death threats because of game delays just says it all. Can you imagine s…

> The audience of gamers strikes me as perhaps the most immature, needlessly difficult group of art consumers in the world today. Even movies don’t get the same kind of petulant obsession and hostility that games do. I’m not sure if it’s just a consequence of gamers being younger or what, but it’s a major turnoff to me.

It's like saying the people who play Call Of Duty online and Visual Novel X or Z are necessarily the same audience, no matter what game is produced, it's purely a stereotype, and it's not true.

Re: CD Projekt Red is under investigation

#48

Post by MaxBarraclough »

Pfhreak wrote: post #14
chundicus wrote: post #3

I hope this will encourage big studios to stop releasing broken games, but I doubt it will. The incentives are just so broken due to ease of patching, a need/desire for cash after a drawn out dev process, and a general disrespect for their customers. I think releasing a "broken" game in the form of "early access" from smaller studios can be good in terms of iterative and community development, but also that can be ab…

The problem isn't releasing a broken game. There's a huge challenge in making and releasing games and meeting a specific quality bar. That said, knowing you have a broken game and saying it's great is extremely avoidable and totally should stop. Tell me the game is a mess and let me play with it.

> The problem isn't releasing a broken game. There's a huge challenge in making and releasing games and meeting a specific quality bar.

That's true for any complex product. There are reasonable expectations, and indeed laws, about products being fit for purpose. I don't see why video games are unique.

It's possible to patch them after release. This partially explains, but does not excuse, the pattern of games releasing in a broken state.

Re: CD Projekt Red is under investigation

#49

Post by vlunkr »

throw_m239339 wrote: post #29
ceilingcorner wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I considered going into the gaming industry years ago, but the audience is such a turnoff. It really holds the medium back as an art form.

> I considered going into the gaming industry years ago, but the audience is such a turnoff. I think that the issue isn't so much 'the audience' but the terrible work conditions associated with the gaming industry. > It really holds the medium back as an art form How? games are probably the most diverse art form in existence today, there is literally no rules to what a game can be.

> How? games are probably the most diverse art form in existence today, there is literally no rules to what a game can be.

Really? Compared to film, music, visual arts? I would say it's the least diverse of them. It's starting to branch out, especially in the indie scene, but it's still in it's infancy.

Re: CD Projekt Red is under investigation

#50

Post by ArchOversight »

gabereiser wrote: post #10
warpech wrote: post #2

It seems that everybody seems to hate this game, or rather unfinishedness of it. Meanwhile, I am playing it since 2 weeks on PS4 (not Pro) and totally enjoying every minute it.

At its core it’s a decent game. The issue is with so many bugs (many of which preventing a player from finishing a story quest) it’s hard to focus on the game when your copy keeps crashing, glitching, frustrating you.

I've ran into a couple of quest bugs, however most of them are about finishing things in certain order of operations, generally it will unlock the next task anyway, and then you can switch the target from the Journal.
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